Kaleidoscope
by lotuskasumi
Summary: Kaleidoscope: "observation of beautiful forms." Or rather, what the Doctor and Clara see when they look at each other. **Following the events of Last Christmas, so spoilers if you haven't seen that.** (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara)


**_"These words overflowing to only you  
>Tied to thoughts delivered to you."<em>**

— D'espairsRay, "Kaleidoscope."

* * *

><p>What does a lonely heart feel like? Best ask the man with two — or better yet, ask the girl who stole them both. Here's what they might say.<p>

A lonely heart feels little different than all those jagged bits of glass tumbling around in a kaleidoscope, all odds and bitter awkward not-quite-proper ends. A heart without a home is just a shattered pattern where there was once a shape. Just smears of color and shade where there was once light.

And that's just how _one_ lonely heart feels. Imagine the pains and pangs one would feel with two?

* * *

><p>How can you be lonely when you look at someone you love? Easy. Look at them once, and then <em>see <em>them.

Loneliness is a time immeasurable, like all the hours and years we lose when we put ourselves to bed in hopes of rest. Loneliness is a time swallowed up in the mouth of sleep, a time worn down to pulp in the teeth of dreams. Loneliness persists even when you're no longer alone, because very often the cause for your aching heart is standing there next to you, and you remember only how much you adored them when you've realized just how much you agonized without them.

Funny that a heart can only work properly after it's lost something. Funny the way two hearts can do this too. You'd think the extra one would want to look out for the other.

How can you be lonely when you're no longer alone? Simple. Look at someone you love, drink them in, see them for every loving line and flaw and mark and bend to their face (never mind if you've never touched it, never mind if you've only traced those angles and shapes and edges in memory, in dreams, in paintings lost to ash). Look at someone you love and know that you can only feel that much in that moment with them and only them, because you've spent so long feeling so little.

* * *

><p>Half of this next sentence is ridiculous, but like all things in life you must bear with it until the very end. As they sit patiently in the back of Santa's sleigh, all the dreamers waking up one by one, Clara knows that the Doctor is looking at her. She knows it because his eyes — big and sad but mostly fierce and ever so tricky — are like a weighted hand holding on to her wrist, demanding neither attention nor praise but entreating, pleading. Clara doesn't have to look at him to know what she'd find in those eyes. The heaviness of his gaze, the press and pull and leaden sadness, couldn't be any more obvious than if he'd screamed it.<p>

But he wouldn't. Of course he wouldn't. Not this one, and certainly not on this night. The Doctor was ever a man who would burn inward to out, choking on every charred shred of bone and withered, ashen clump of vein. He would do this until all that was left were the words that came out of his mouth in brutal, bitter tones, like that of a man whose only use for maps had been to light his way further into the dark. Suffering had never been done half so well, or even quite as deceptively. Like dying, it was an art. And the Doctor would do this quietly, defiantly, with a terrible sort of grace that comes from a man who doesn't light the all-consuming fires, but the one who lives to see them start again and again and again and —

The Doctor is looking at her, Clara knows he's looking at her, but her eyes are on the lights of the city below in a wholehearted focus, the sort of monomaniacal devotion one makes to a scene they know they're likely never to cross again. And what a scene it is. Beautiful, lonely, and just a little grey — cold.

_Like a kaleidoscope_, she thinks, smiling as if she's daring herself to try. The world below her is nothing more than broken bits of light and lives and little gleaming golden stars — and in that moment, that's what her heart is, too. The world and the hearts of those under the same sky are nothing more than reckless little sparks from life's fire. Sometimes they die out too soon. Sometimes they persist humbly, sweetly, lending light to their nearest and dearest little own. And sometimes, in very special cases, _impossible _cases one might even say, these sparks start fires that burn the very same hearts they warm.

That's how the Doctor's looking at her. Like he's burning and taking shelter in the fatal warmth. That's how Clara's looking at the lights below, so far away and yet so beautiful. Like she could burn up to nothing there if they'd only let her get close enough to touch. That's how Clara looks when she turns to face the Doctor at last, teasing him for being as predictably grumpy as ever — but he's gone. Gone before she can show him that look and those eyes and say something with that mouth that she said once before, but he might not have been listening. He certainly wasn't looking.

And just like that, with the Doctor gone and her alone (relatively speaking — Santa was still present), Clara's chest feels like it's once again home to those little beads and glass and dust and glimmering, shimmering shards that had once been a heart. They cut and drive in deep, but not with enough force to hurt. It's certainly not enough to wake her up.

Only the Doctor can do that.

Kind of.

* * *

><p>There's a crown on her head — paper of course, but a crown all the same — and both of them are thinking back to certain phrases, certain proposals, missed chances and lost threads that go back far for them both. Several centuries for him, a good sixty-some-odd years for her.<p>

_"What a queen she would have made."_

_"I don't want to be queen of a thousand galaxies."_

But in that room, in that light, in his eyes, sitting rapt and lovely and patient as his hands approach, Clara knows (as she's always known, clever girl) that in a way she's actually ruled all along. His hearts are her throne. Quietly and well kept, but never far from command.

"Can you really see no difference in me?"

"Clara Oswald, you'll never look any different to me."

Even the broken shards of a heart can be sculpted back into one if you're patient enough to try, if you're dedicated enough to the toil — and if you can see what form it once was.

* * *

><p>"Please… Don't even argue," the Doctor says.<p>

She wants to argue with that just for laughs, just for fun, just so he knows that they're both awake now. But he might be expecting that of her. It's hard for Clara to tell in that moment. She's never seen him look quite so curious before — not questioning curious, but the sort of curious that puts his hearts right there on either sleeve for her to see, and yet she can't bring herself to pull her eyes off his face. There is one word written on every line of that impossible man's face: her name. Perhaps a _please_ is mixed in, since he said it out loud. Perhaps another word, one that hasn't quite been said, but they've both come rather close.

_"Do _you think_ I _care for you so little_ that betraying me would make a difference?"_

_"Hatred is too strong an emotion to waste on someone you don't like. … I don't hate you; I could never hate you."_

(Clara thinks she has something of the edge here, having said quite plainly, _"I love you__," _to the man, even if semantics would say otherwise but no, shush, quiet, that's not a thought you need right now) And before that bitter brutal thought can land and kill the spark that's bringing life to his eyes and reminding her of why she loved a life with him, Clara reaches out for the hand he's offered her, pulls him in, and lets him have a kiss.

When they pull back he looks very much as he did last Christmas, their first Christmas. All eyes and hunched shoulders and staring, curious, mad eyes. Eyes that refuse to dull or lose their spark, refuse to break or scatter off into the brutal, bleeding hurt that she can sometimes see him do.

"Merry Christmas, Doctor," she says. It may as well be their new hello. A fresh start. A second chance.

"Merry Christmas, Clara Oswald," he says. He knows what it means, too.

And then they're running, running out of her room, running out the door, down the hall, running out to the snow and the night and the cold, to the TARDIS, to happiness, to —

* * *

><p>"An outer space hibachi restaurant?"<p>

"That's what the brochure says. Said. I dunno, maybe it even implied. I might have shortened a word or two, they tend to drone on."

But that wasn't quite what mattered here. "You're taking me to a restaurant. In public. With you dressed as —" Clara raises her hand up and down, gesturing at his coat, the hoodie, the boots. What word to use? What words _not _to choose? "—as a grunge magician."

"Yes, I'm going to a restaurant in public with _you_, who is dressed in naught but a nightie," the Doctor fires back.

This could be an argument, but they're both smiling too much for that.

So when their chef approaches, drawing smiles and hearts and birds and something that could have been a lagoon of stars in the oil before setting them all ablaze, flames darting so high they licked the silver vents overhead, Clara thinks they have gone a bit too long with just sweetness. Smiles and silence and tightly locked hands are all wonders, but words — silly words, words like playful little digs just below the ribs — are just as nice, too.

"Don't lean in too close, Doctor. Don't want to singe off those eyebrows, they're your best feature."

He says nothing until the count of twelve. In silence the Doctor watches Clara sway a little in her seat as she swings her legs back and forth, her feet not quite touching the floor. She's only just taller than the chair, and he might have made some joke about giving her a boost if he didn't think she'd turn around and give him such a glare whose sharpness could dull daggers. With his twelve seconds up and the flames on the grill darting high again, setting Clara's face aglow so that her eyes sparkle and her smile seems brighter than a whole legion of stars, forget the lagoon, the Doctor decides it's his turn.

"Don't singe that nightie, Clara. Your Gran might want it back."

* * *

><p>What does a lonely heart feel like? Best ask the man with two — or better yet, ask the girl who stole them both. Here's what they might say.<p>

A heart is only lonely until you find a way to bring it back home. There's never one proper way to do it. There are as many ways to find a home as there are stars in the sky. One way is in dreams. One way is in a dream in another dream in a nightmare. One way is a quiet little wish you whisper in the dark, confiding to the creases on your pillow and whatever long-dormant monster lurks under your bed (he's still there and he's seething, knowing that you've moved on to bigger, braver fears).

Another is to just take the hand that reaches for you, no matter all the hurt that lies behind you. What's past is past. It cannot hurt you now.

A heart is lonely only as long as you let it be, because just as it is important to let yourself grieve and know why you do, it's just as vital to tell yourself when the wound is closed and the scar long since sealed. Even a kaleidoscope isn't just a broken assortment of shards and bits and jagged, pretty colors and shapes. It's a collection, an ever-present chance to change the shape and shades of things — if you'll only just let yourself look and _see_.

A lonely heart that's found its home feels little different than the tunnel holding all those jagged bits of glass tumbling around all odds and ends inside a kaleidoscope: it's a grim privilege, holding on to what's broken. A heart that's found its home is the cradle for all those shattered patterns that will once again be a shape. It's a sanctuary for those smears of color and shade that will once more be light.

That's what the Doctor sees when he looks at Clara: a way to keep all the broken parts together, whole and home. That's what Clara sees each time she looks at him: a light and life and home that's come back again. Impossible of course — but back again, against all odds.

And that's just how _one_ returned-home heart feels. Imagine how much more relieved would feel the two?


End file.
